Computer and television networks have become the predominant communications means by which product vendors communicate information about products to users. Such information may involve advertising, as well as other content such as titles, descriptions, and prices of products such as movies, games, and books for presentation to a user. For example, an on-line mall may provide a list of such content items (e.g., books) that is presented to the user so that the user may select items in the list to purchase. In this case, the book titles, authors, and brief descriptions are the content items. Advertisements relate to another type of content that may be transmitted to users. A server device typically transmits the content to a client device where the content is presented to the user. Examples of server devices are the “head-end” of a cable service provider or a server computer on the Internet. The client device may be a television set-top-box (STB) or a client computer. Regardless of the particular communications environment, a primary goal of product vendors in providing content to users is to reach or target those users who are most likely to purchase the products.
With respect to targeting advertisements, traditional targeting techniques focus on reaching as large an audience as possible; i.e., mass media advertising. This mass media advertising strategy seeks to reach the most number of viewers to increase the odds of contacting the ones most likely to purchase the advertised product or service. Since mass media targeting is expensive, other techniques have been developed in an attempt to not only narrow the audience but also target specific users based on an evaluation of related items. For instance, targeting techniques focus on an analysis of the readers of a particular magazine or viewers of a particular television (TV) program. Then advertisers choose whether or not to advertise in conjunction with the related item; i.e., the magazine or the TV program. Inherent in these traditional content distribution techniques are the problems of overinclusion (targeting viewers who have no desire to purchase the product or service) and underinclusion (excluding potential consumers). Because these techniques assess consumer interest on the larger scale of program audiences instead of on an individual viewer basis, the techniques will always suffer from the squandered advertising dollars associated with overinclusion and underinclusion.
Additionally, traditional targeting techniques leave consumers inadequately informed about products that they might want to purchase. Because of overinclusion, consumers are inundated with advertisements for unwanted products. Due to the inundation, the consumers may miss advertisements for products they actually might want. Similarly, as a result of underinclusion, consumers are simply not informed about products they might want. Thus, overinclusion and underinclusion result in consumers' wasted time and energy in becoming informed about products they are not interested in.
More recent methods of targeting content to users have typically involved the server device keeping track of what content a client device uses most and transmitting that type of content to the client device. For example, on the Internet, various mechanisms are used to record the viewing habits of a user at a particular client computer. The content of the pages viewed is typically analyzed by a server computer to determine what topics are of interest to the user. The server places content, such as advertisements or links to other web sites, on the pages viewed by the user based on these particular topics of interest. These advertisements or links are often placed around the primary text or image in a web page and are commonly referred to as “banner ads.” As another example, in a cable television network using a STB, the STB records content that is viewed by the user. Later, the head-end of the cable service provider polls the STB to determine what topics are of interest to the user of the STB. Based on these topics, the head-end transmits related content; e.g., specific advertisements and the like.
Unfortunately, these methods involve the client device providing the server device with information about the user of the client device. For instance, in the television environment, STBs provide personal user information to the head-end of the cable service provider. Moreover, in order to target the most likely consumer, the server device should be given as much information about the user as possible. Requiring the user's private information to be sent across a network to the server device renders the private information vulnerable to theft and resale to unknown third parties. The moment a user's private information is sent from the client device, how the information is used is essentially out of the user's control. As a result, in typical advertising systems, in order for the user to receive advertisements appropriate for the user, the user must give up some portion of his/her privacy, which is not acceptable to many users.
Additionally, with respect to many server devices, the personal information is gleaned via a two-way data communication method that involves multiple polling events. These polling events consume significant server resources and processing time, as well as bandwidth over the communications network. Consequently, the server interaction with the client in order to provide the user with appropriate content is inefficient.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been developed.